Moodance by Diane Chandler

Diane Chandler is an author and winner of The People’s Book Prize 2016. Her second novel Moondance will be published on the 1st November to coincide with National Fertility Awareness Week.

After years of struggling to conceive naturally she fell pregnant after her fourth round of IVF. Diane and her husband Nick went on to try for a sibling with another three rounds of IVF without any success. After her daughter was born Diane started to write a novel about IVF but left it hidden away for years before completing it in 2015.

The book follows a high-flying career woman who leaves it too late to have a baby and finds herself and her relationship unraveling when she has to battle with IVF. The novel draws heavily on her personal experience of the physical and emotional impact of IVF.

But Cat is flying high as a political lobbyist and is reluctant to try for a baby until she is ready. Unable then to conceive naturally, she and Dom embark on fertility treatment and both they and their relationship begin to unravel. In Cat, I chose a protagonist who is entitled, somewhat arrogant even. As an early review has said, “Cat is in control. Of everything. What better heroine to pit against the cruel and whimsical cycles of the moon.”

While Moondance is a novel about IVF, on another level, its themes are more universal, of love, of marriage, of sex, of family. I’m told that it is honest and authentic and emotionally raw – but there is also something to smile about along the way, even laugh out loud moments. And, of course, there is always hope. There has to be hope.

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